


the art of romance

by notquitepunkrock



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Arguing, Bad Flirting, Drinking, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Fluff, Frankly they kind of skip the friend stage, Girls Kissing, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, PJO Femslash Minibang 2018, Pining, but everyone is over 21, but thats mostly at the end, but with flirty undertones, lesbians written by a lesbian. what a concept, there's a decent amount of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 07:31:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15408063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitepunkrock/pseuds/notquitepunkrock
Summary: “We have to go, Thals,” she said, sliding off her barstool. There was an anger in her stormy gray eyes that made her look equal parts attractive and terrifying as she glared at Piper. “The bar’s been overrun by pretentious artistes.” The last word was said with an exaggerated accent on the word, making Annabeth sound like a bad parody of a Parisian artist. The quarter of French blood in Piper boiled beneath her skin.Piper huffed, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. “I don’t need a sell-out like you, anyway,” she snapped. If she was sober, she would have been embarrassed by her own words, or otherwise startled by her quick temper. As it was, she was clenching her fists by her sides as her face turned brilliantly red.---There is a vicious feud between the fine arts majors and the design majors at the Olympus College of Art and Design. When aspiring architect Annabeth meets future illustrator Piper, the feud comes between them with a vengeance.





	the art of romance

**Author's Note:**

> This is like, two days late but here's my entry for the femslash minibang!! I hope you enjoy this nonsense, it was fun to write. As always, a shoutout goes to my beta, Molly, who helped me so unbelievably much with this piece. It was one of my most challenging things to write for some reason tbh. 
> 
> Have fun! Lots of insults are traded, lots of hard feelings and girls being dumb. They drink too much, but everyone is 21, so there's no underage drinking at least.

Piper slammed down her empty beer bottle down on the slightly-sticky tabletop, raising her arms in victory. “Take that Valdez!” she crowed. She stuck her tongue out at her best friend, who sighed and set his own drink down.

“You know, making me pay really isn’t fair when I’m broker than you are,” he pouted. Piper just laughed, rolling her eyes and stealing a fry from the basket in front of him. She wrinkled her nose when she took a bite - they’d gone cold and were a bit soggy from the ketchup that Leo had squirted all over the top like an absolute heathen. Fantastic.

“That argument doesn’t fly when you have a job and I don’t,” she pointed out. “Dad’s stopped paying for fun stuff, remember?” 

Leo winced and sent a guilty look of apology that Piper waved off. A few months ago, the reminder that her father was cutting her off until she learned a little more responsibility would have stung. Now, it didn’t seem like nearly as big a deal as it had been. In fact, in the past three months she’d learned more about budgeting than she ever had in the previous twenty-one years of her life.

Funny how that worked. 

Piper stole another unsatisfying fry from Leo’s basket as he scanned the bar. It was empty, as it was most nights in the middle of the week. The only reason they were there at all was Leo’s mourning over his failed attempt to ask out Callie from textile design.

Suddenly, her friend’s eyes lit up. “Cute girl alert,” he hissed, nodding towards the long bar that took up the entire far side of the room. Piper rolled her eyes as she turned around.

“You’re the worst, Leo,” she said, half-sincerely. Her eyes landed on the girls in question, and she had to prevent herself from sucking in a breath.

There were two of them, one nursing a martini with a grin and the other bent over a sketchbook. Both were undeniably gorgeous, but the girl with the sketchbook was what really interested Piper. She had long blonde curls that were tied up in a ponytail, and whenever her friend said something amusing a smile crossed her face that made Piper’s heart stop. Before she really thought about it, Piper found herself following Leo away from their table and over to the bar.

Leo sat down beside the friend, who sent him a glare with electric blue eyes that would have broken a less-determined man. She could already see the outcome of his flirting, the way he would soon be sent running with his tail between his legs, but Piper was far too preoccupied by slipping onto the stool next to the blonde and grinning when she looked up.

“Hi,” she said. The other girl smiled slowly and nodded her greeting. “I’m Piper.”

“Annabeth,” the other girl replied. Piper mouthed the name. It fit the girl with the princess curls perfectly. “What brings you over here?”

Piper almost jumped at being asked a question, but just barely managed to keep her composure. “My dumb friend saw yours from across the room and immediately had to make a fool of himself,” she said easily, turning around to lean back on her elbows on the bar. She sent Annabeth a lazy grin. “Couldn’t let him crash and burn without an audience.”

“Is that all?” Annabeth asked, a smirk slipping onto her face that, frankly, Piper would give anything to kiss away. 

Piper shrugged. “Didn’t hurt that you’re pretty cute yourself,” she admitted. Even as the words left her mouth, she felt her cheeks heating up. There was no way she would have been that forward if she wasn’t a little bit tipsy. God, she was turning into Leo.

The blonde girl blushed, turning back to her sketchbook. Piper rose up on her tiptoes to peer down at the pad. She really hoped the girl was a fine arts student at Olympus. That would be amazing - as an Illustration major herself, she was more than a little into the artistic type.

Sure, she’d never exactly  _ seen _ Annabeth in any of her art classes, but maybe she was a year older or something, or was in one of the more computer-based majors. That would make sense.

(Piper suppressed the part of her that pointed out she could be a  _ design _ major, interested in the more technical fields. The schoolwide rivalry between fine arts and design had wormed its way into her, despite her initial dismissal of the concept. As it stood now, Leo was the only person she spoke to from the other half of the school, and that was only because he had been her best friend since the seventh grade.)

Annabeth glanced up at her and angled her book away with a cheeky grin. “No peeking,” she said. “This is my midterm project. Don’t need anyone spreading my ideas around.”

Piper’s face lit up. “You go to Olympus?” she asked eagerly, leaning over with more interest now. “Really? What class is that for, lemme see…”

She drifted off at the sight of a carefully sketched house, her heart sinking. “Architecture,” she hissed with a hatred she didn’t even know existed within her. Piper stumbled backwards a few steps, bright eyes turning into a hard glare. “Of course.”

Annabeth looked up, taking in Piper’s hard eyes and narrowed her eyes. “Yes,” she said warily. “Exactly. Why?”

Piper pointed at herself. “Illustration,” she said, taking another step back. Annabeth’s jaw hardened, and she snapped her sketchbook closed pointedly, causing her friend to look up from where she was just-barely humoring Leo’s flirting.

“We have to go, Thals,” she said, sliding off her barstool. There was an anger in her stormy gray eyes that made her look equal parts attractive and terrifying as she glared at Piper. “The bar’s been overrun by pretentious  _ artistes _ .” The last word was said with an exaggerated accent on the word, making Annabeth sound like a bad parody of a Parisian artist. The quarter of French blood in Piper boiled beneath her skin.

Piper huffed, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. “I don’t need a  _ sell-out _ like you, anyway,” she snapped. If she was sober, she would have been embarrassed by her own words, or otherwise startled by her quick temper. As it was, she was clenching her fists by her sides as her face turned brilliantly red. 

Annabeth’s friend, Thals, seemed get a quick read on the situation, because she shoved herself off of the barstool and grabbed Annabeth’s forearm. “Right, time to go home,” she said, pushing past a startled Leo. “Good luck with the questioning-your-sexuality thing, Leonard.”

Piper made note of that comment as she watched them leave, filing it away to discuss with her best friend when she was sober and didn’t feel like there was smoke coming from her ears. Once they were gone, she let out a muffled scream and stormed back over to their table. 

She didn’t bother to see if Leo was following her as she gathered her things and stormed out the door. Luckily, he was right behind her, jogging to catch up. “Hey, wait, what was that about?” he asked, a frown covering his face. “It looked like you guys were hitting it off for a minute.”

“She’s an  _ architecture major _ ,” Piper hissed. Her nose scrunched up in the way her older half-sister always said would give her wrinkles. Piper didn’t care.

Leo paused. “Okay,” he said slowly. “You remember I’m an industrial design major, right?” 

Piper huffed. “That’s different,” she snapped. “You know what? I have to go. See you later, Leo.” She was gone before he had a chance to reply, stalking off into the night.

\---

“What did you say her name was, again?” asked Thalia, her fingers poised over her keyboard. Annabeth groaned and peered up from where her head was buried in her pillow. Thalia arched an eyebrow at her, entirely unimpressed.

“Piper,” Annabeth finally grumbled. She dropped her head back into the pillow and let out another long groan.

Thalia’s fingers flew over the keys. She hummed after a moment, shoving the computer towards her best friend and kicking her in the side with a little more force than strictly necessary. “Piper McLean,” she announced when Annabeth looked up. “Her mom is on the Olympus board of directors. Bet she bought her way in.”

Annabeth’s head shot back up. “Don’t say that!” she said. “That’s rude!”

Thalia’s other eyebrow raised. “Do we hate this chick or don’t we?” she asked. “I’m confused.”

Annabeth sat up and buried her head in her hands. “I don’t know!” she cried. “You know I think this whole feud thing is ridiculous, but the minute I said architecture she clammed up, and it just rubbed me the wrong way! What is wrong with me?” 

There was a small smirk on her friend’s face. “You like her,” she teased, poking Annabeth’s side with her foot again. “You li-i-ike her.” She ducked the pillow Annabeth threw in her direction and rolled off the bed with cat-like ease, stretching her arms above her head as she straightened up. 

“I’ll see you in the morning, Annie,” she said, dodging another pillow. “Have fun dreaming of Piper McLean!”

“I don’t like her!” Annabeth called, throwing her final pillow at the door as Thalia slipped out. Once it clicked shut behind her, she groaned and flopped backwards onto her bed.

She did  _ not _ like Piper. She’d barely even met the girl and she’d already proven herself to be a pretentious, petty, snob. Annabeth could  _ never _ be into someone who would let the stupid feud between the students dictate who they could be friends with. It was just so… so shallow.

Thalia’s words ran through her head all night, making it nearly impossible to sleep. As a general rule, Annabeth refused to let herself develop a crush or a burning hatred with someone if all they’d had was a single conversation, and she could barely call what she’d had with Piper even that. But she was just so  _ infuriating _ . 

Adorable, too, her mind supplied, which was an entirely unneeded addition to her struggle. But, well, it was hard to deny the way her heart had fluttered in her chest when Piper had smiled, just before discovering her major. 

Good lord, she was so screwed.

\---

The next time Piper saw Annabeth was a week later, while walking to the on-campus cafe with her cousin, Mitchell. He was walking ahead of her, talking about some ridiculous thing his cat had done when Piper spotted the other girl. She gasped when she caught sight of her, grabbing her cousin’s arm and pulling on the sleeve of his shirt until he stopped walking and looked at her with a confused expression.

“That’s her, that’s the girl I told you about,” Piper hissed, hauling him behind a tree. He peered around the trunk before she snatched him back. “Don’t, she’ll see you!” 

Mitchell rolled his eyes and dragged her out from behind the tree. “Well, she’s way over there,” he waved vaguely towards where Annabeth was camped out on a park bench, her nose buried in a textbook, “and in between me and coffee. Which I’m going to need if I’m going to finish my project before critique tomorrow.”

With that, he dragged her down the sidewalk, directly towards where Annabeth was sitting. Piper’s heart pounded in her chest in the infuriating way it always seemed to do whenever she thought about the blonde architect. Just as they were approaching, the other girl looked up. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of Piper, who bristled as they made eye contact.

Piper wrinkled her nose as they got closer. “Not you again,” she said, rolling her eyes so hard they hurt. Annabeth looked almost wounded for a moment before schooling her face into an unimpressed pout.

“Ah, the local starving artist stereotype approaches,” Annabeth snapped, her cheeks turning red. Piper chalked that up to her annoyance, as she could feel her own face heating up the same way.

“At least I’ll starve with integrity,” she replied. She could feel Mitchell rolling his eyes behind her, but somehow Piper didn’t think bringing up her father’s excessively large bank account would help her at the moment. 

Annabeth’s nostrils flared. “I have  _ plenty _ of integrity,” she said. “Just because I don’t wait around on my butt for people to come to  _ me- _ ” 

Mitchell cut in here, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “You don’t know how much effort and networking it takes to get commissions on the internet, let alone an actual showing. You design nerds wouldn’t get it.”

A small part of Piper felt bad once she saw the look on Annabeth’s face, but she covered it with the anger she felt as Annabeth snapped back. She hated it when people were rude to Mitchell. It made her blood boil. 

“We don’t have time for this, Mitch,” she said, grabbing him by the sleeve and tugging him away. “Let’s leave her to her studying.”

\---

After encountering Piper while studying in the courtyard, Annabeth decided to forgo her favorite study spot in order to avoid more run-ins with the petty brunette. She was mostly lucky - a few times, she’d run into her while crossing campus, but they tended to limit those interactions to a couple of insults spat over each other’s shoulders as they hurried to class. Afterward, she’d text Thalia, bemoaning the completely shallow, petty nature of their mutual hatred, much to Thalia’s amusement.

Once, she’d seen the other girl in the library and had ducked behind a shelf of audiobooks until she was gone. She’d peeked between the shelves and tried not to be distracted by the swish of Piper’s skirt at her knees and the way she tucked her hair behind her ear absentmindedly when she was searching for a book. It wasn’t until after she’d headed towards the front desk that Annabeth’s heart had stopped pounding. She pushed the feeling aside, blaming it on the fear of being seen, and ignored it until it went away.

(Annabeth wasn’t proud of that one, so she neglected to mention it to her best friend. One little lie of omission wasn’t going to change anything. Besides, Thalia would definitely overreact and claim Annabeth had a crush on Piper again. Which was, of course, ridiculous.)

Her strategy of avoidance was working so well that it was almost a month before Annabeth saw Piper again for more than a passing moment.

She was with Thalia again, though this time Jason was also tagging along as they ventured into the campus art store. Annabeth needed a new sketchbook, and Jason had lost his replacement nibs for his tablet’s stylus, so Thalia had decided to tag along. Annabeth just hoped there wasn’t a repeat of the last time she’d gone to the store with her friends. Paint was expensive to pay for, and hard to clean off tile floors, so she’d learned. 

She heard Piper before she saw her, and realized with a grimace that she was standing with her friend from the bar right in the middle of the sketchbook aisle. With a start, she realized that she’d have to go right past them to get the kind she needed. There was no getting around it. She couldn’t even run away this time, not with Jason and Thalia standing right there.

“Great,” she grumbled, setting her shoulders and stalking down the aisle. Maybe if she just didn’t look at the other girl…

Her plan was foiled by Thalia, who had a shit-eating grin on her face that Annabeth was absolutely not a fan of. “Hey, you’re those kids from the bar!” she announced, ignoring the deadly glare that Annabeth was sending her. “Leonard and Piper, right?”

“It’s Leo,” the boy said with a grin. “So close, but no cigar.” His eyes slid past Jason - a small blush formed on the blond’s cheeks at his wink, which Annabeth made note of to tease him about later - and landed on Annabeth. His mouth opened in a small ‘o’ and he nudged Piper in the side.

Piper turned towards Annabeth and immediately she felt her cheeks heat up and her blood start to boil. God, what was it about this girl that drove Annabeth so crazy?

The other girl stared at her through her long eyelashes, mouth curling into a slow smirk (the memory of which definitely wouldn’t be distracting Annabeth during class for the next three days). “What are you doing here, Design Nerd?” she asked. “This is a tech-free zone. Gotta take your LEGOs somewhere else.”

Annabeth huffed. “LEGO can be an excellent architectural design tool,” she said, immediately regretting the words. Well, that certainly made her look like even more a nerd than she already was. “And I’ll have you know, I’ve filled up three sketchbooks since the semester started.”

Piper’s tan cheeks were painted with a faint pink blush that was annoyingly adorable, and she cut her eyes away for a moment. “Well I’ve filled up four.”

“I average thirteen!”

“Well I average  _ sixteen _ .” Piper’s nostrils flared and really, that wasn’t supposed to be cute on anyone. Annabeth got momentarily distracted by the small freckle underneath Piper’s eye that crinkled slightly when she narrowed her eyes. What Annabeth wouldn’t give to kiss that freckle-

Wait, what? She was being ridiculous now. Honestly, if Thalia could hear the inside of Annabeth’s head she’d never shut up. 

Hoping to get out of there quickly, she snatched the sketchbook she needed off the shelf and stalked away. She didn’t even bother to check if Thalia and Jason were behind her, hurrying instead to the tech aisle. Her heavily beating heart only slowed down when she finally slumped against the display of drawing tablets and curled her hands into fists inside the sleeves of her sweater.

Jason and his sister appeared a moment later, wearing twin smirks when they caught sight of Annabeth.

“What’s the diagnosis, Dr. Jason?” Thalia said, using a high-pitched voice that she reserved for when she was pretending to imitate Annabeth. “Is it serious?”

Jason’s blue eyes sparkled with mirth, and he tossed his sister the small packet of stylus nibs. “Lovesickness,” he said in the most serious voice he could muster. “It’s fatal.”

The siblings burst into laughter, and Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Grow up, you two,” she said. But as she turned away, she was trying to suppress the smile daring to cross her face. 

What if they were right? 

\----

Piper hated herself a little bit more every time she saw Annabeth. 

She didn’t even know the girl’s last name, but she was still consumed with an irrational anger and desire to be  _ noticed _ every time the blonde walked by. She would be simply on the way to class or in the middle of shopping, but if Annabeth appeared, she’d have to make some sort of snippy, horrible comment that was more fitting coming out of her cousin Drew’s mouth than her own. 

This wasn’t like her, was the thing. Piper had a policy of always being the nicest person she could be, of always looking for the best in people. When the rest of her high school class was making fun of her and Leo for the color of their skin and their individual money situations, she’d turned the other cheek and dragged Leo away, even as fights itched beneath her skin. Her mother was well-versed in the art of being petty, and Drew was infamous for her sheer bitchiness. Piper never wanted to be like them.

So what the hell was she doing, treating Annabeth like this?

Leo had a theory, but Piper didn’t want to put much stock in it. He teased her endlessly about the crush that she clearly didn’t have, swearing she was like a little boy pulling on her crush’s pigtails. (That had prompted a conversation about the problematic nature of encouraging young girls to think that bullying meant someone liked them and effectively shut down the conversation, or at least pushed it to a later date.)

Most of the reason Piper shoved that theory aside - besides the fact that sure, Annabeth was stupidly gorgeous, and witty, and intelligent, but that didn’t mean Piper was in  _ love _ with her or anything - was that Leo very much had love on the brain at the moment.

She couldn’t blame him, exactly. He’d been dating a guy (and wasn’t that a piece of news) the last few weeks, Jason, and was completely infatuated. Hell, Piper adored the guy, who’d started joining their many hangouts. He was sweet, and funny, and he made Leo smile. He was also a graphic design nerd, proving once and for all that Piper didn’t actually care about this dumb feud and was just… acting out around Annabeth.

That was all.

Right? 

All of this ran through Piper’s head as she sorted through her closet for the kind of outfit that was appropriate for a party. She didn’t have an outfit for a party. She never even went to parties. Her closet was filled with oversized flannels and shredded up jeans and shorts and army jackets and sneakers that were old and filled with holes. Sure, her parents were extraordinarily well off, but Piper had never been the sort of person who was really into clothing and fashion. 

Which was why she was presented with the current dilemma. 

She wouldn’t even be going to this fucking party, but Leo and Jason were throwing it. And what kind of best friend would Piper be if she didn’t go? (Though since when was Leo the sort of person who went to or threw parties, she didn’t know. Leo was the kind of person who took all of his friends out for drinks that Piper would end up paying for and he’d have to be dragged home at the end of the night. She had yet to decide if this new development was better or worse.)

Finally, she settled on an oversized red flannel that she could leave mostly unbuttoned and hanging off her shoulder. She tucked it into a pair of high-waisted shorts that she was fairly certain were Lacey’s. She slid a ratty pair of converse covered in doodles onto her feet, because fuck if she was going to search for anything nicer. 

She was finished getting dressed and in the middle of twisting her hair into a pair of space buns when her phone buzzed with a FaceTime notification in her pocket. With one hand still holding her left bun in place, she twisted her torso into an uncomfortable position to grab her phone from her back pocket. 

Leo’s grinning face stared up at her, squished against a window in just the right position to look like he was trapped in her phone. She rolled her eyes and answered him, setting the phone on the counter so she could finish her hair while they talked.

“What’s up, buttercup?” she greeted as soon as his face appeared. Leo grimaced and moved the phone so Jason’s face was in the camera. He seemed equally uncomfortable to be talking to her, his cheeks bright pink and his lower lip caught between his teeth. Piper let her hands fall to her sides. “Oh no, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Leo shuffled awkwardly. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “Listen, Jason and I were just talking and… well, his best friend is Annabeth.”

Piper felt her face grow warm. “Annabeth as in  _ the _ Annabeth?” she asked. She prayed it was just a coincidence, that maybe the name was slightly more common than she thought. Maybe they were just confused.

Jason shrugged and nodded guiltily. “I know I forgot to mention it,” he admitted it. “I just didn’t think it would be important. But she’s going to be at the party and we just… Leo, you do it, you know her better.”

“We need you guys to get along,” Leo said, wincing as soon as the words left his mouth. Piper spluttered indignantly. She didn’t get along with Annabeth, that was the whole problem. “No, seriously, just this once. Then you can go back to hating her with a fiery passion. Jason already asked Annabeth and she said she’d do it!” 

Infuriating as it was that she was apparently so notoriously hot-tempered when it came to this girl that her friends were begging her to get along with her for a night, she knew they had a point. Especially when Leo started pouting and pulling the “best friend” card. She couldn’t let him down, and she knew it. 

She sighed. “I’ll be good,” she said. “But only if she is too.” The boys’ twin smiles  made the promise completely worth it. She just hoped it would work out in her favor.

Of course it didn’t. Things started going downhill practically the moment she walked out of the dorm, keys and phone in hand. It took a whole fifteen minutes to walk from Piper’s dorm to Jason’s off-campus apartment, during which time the wind seemed out to get her. It whipped her hair in an effort to remove it from its buns and caused her shirt to slip down her shoulders and almost below her chest at least three times, so she looked unfortunately rumpled by the time she made it to the front door.

That would have, frankly, been fine, if Annabeth hadn’t approached at the exact same moment, looking annoyingly perfect as she always did. Piper steadfastly ignored the way her perfectly mussed curls fell around her shoulders and her black skirt twitched just above her knees as she walked. With an eye trained to makeup as only a daughter of Aphrodite McLean could be, Piper caught sight of just the slightest bit of highlighter on her cheeks and natural contouring that infuriatingly only enhanced how gorgeous she was.

It made Piper feel like a fake, standing next to her uncomfortably in front of Jason’s door. She hated that, and it took everything in her not to make a snarky comment about it. She promised Leo, and she would keep that promise if it was the last thing she did. 

She reached out to ring the doorbell just as Annabeth reached up to knock. There was an awkward few moments where they each made aborted attempts to let each other alert the others to their arrival, falling over each other. Piper nearly hit the other girl in the face once, whispering an awkward apology under her breath. Finally, Piper took a step back, motioning for Annabeth to knock.

Leo opened the door. His shoulders stiffened at the sight of the girls together, but his smile was wide. “Piper and Annabeth are here!” he yelled over his shoulder, reaching out to grab Piper in a huge hug. Jason came in from down the hall, shouting a hello to Piper before he dragged Annabeth further into the apartment.

Piper frowned. “Let me guess,” she said as Leo’s shoulders relaxed. “Keeping us away from each other to minimize opportunity for yelling?”

“You know us so well,” Leo said. “Come on, I need help putting the beers in the cooler before everyone else gets here.”

Piper spent the next half hour helping Leo with small tasks around the apartment. Just after someone finally dimmed the overhead lights and turned on the fairy lights strung up near the ceiling, there was a knock on the door. Almost before she had time to think, the party was in full swing. 

There were people spilling out of every room and tucked into every corner, laughing and talking and yelling. The drinks were going almost as fast as the coolers could be restocked, and someone had already had to make another run to the store to buy more chips and dip at least once already. Piper had pushed herself into a small corner of the room, nursing a cup full of some concoction that Leo had shoved into her hands before dancing away. She could see most of the living room-turned-dance floor from her spot, and was starting to feel delightfully tipsy.

Percy from her jewelry-making elective was dancing with Callie the Textiles Major, with a decent amount of space between the two that indicated completely platonic friendship. Sitting on the couch was Will Solace, with Nico di Angelo’s face tucked into his shoulder in a way that made Piper pretty sure he was asleep. Students from practically every major in the school were there, mingling in a way that Piper was pretty sure wouldn’t possible if the party was held on campus.

Once again, she felt the coil of guilt in her stomach when she thought of the way she’d let this stupid feud control her everytime she was around Annabeth. She took another long swallow of her drink and set off to find another.

By the time Piper was well on her way to being fully drunk, she stumbled into Annabeth. The blonde herself was swaying a little on her feet and her cheeks were adorably flushed. Her gaze hardened when she realized who’d run into her, and Piper felt a shiver run down her spine at the sight.

“You know you’re a, a bitch,” Annabeth started, stumbling over her words in a way she never did normally. Piper flinched, but she didn’t shoot back with an angry response like she normally did. “You treat me like, like, like garbage and I didn’t even  _ do _ anything to you.”

“I know,” Piper said, but Annabeth wasn’t done.

“And you, you act like I’m the worst just because of my major, and it’s not fair,” she continued, staring at a place just above Piper’s head. “So, so, so screw you!” 

Piper nodded her head, in a way she meant to be understanding, but the movement made her stomach twist. “Oh God, I’m gonna be sick,” she groaned, before doubling over and throwing up at Annabeth’s feet. Annabeth yelped, and Piper took that moment to cover her mouth and run. Leo tried to grab her arms, concern in his dark eyes, but she twisted past him and out the door.

God, she prayed she wouldn’t remember this in the morning.

\----

Two weeks after the party found Annabeth in her favorite rooftop hiding spot, wrapped around a bottle of vodka she’d stolen from Thalia. There was a thick, warm wool blanket wrapped around her shoulder that she’d snagged the last time she’d been over at Jason’s apartment. (A memory of being puked on and stumbling to the bathroom a moment later, wrapping herself in a warm blanket after the frantic shower that left her chilled to her bones, surfaced when she pulled it off her bed. She chose to ignore it.)

Every Friday, Annabeth would find herself up here, curled up in a corner to watch the stars. Some weeks, it was the only thing that kept her sane in the chaos of her schoolwork, the only time she had allotted for herself. She never ventured up there any other time of the week, but this particular Tuesday was just too much.

It was ridiculous, a critique in the drawing class she was required to take that had been harsher than she’d expected, but Annabeth was upset. Annabeth wasn’t particularly gifted when it came to drawing, unless the thing she was drawing was plans for a building. She wasn’t bad, she didn’t think, but she definitely wasn’t the best. 

It just hurt to hear people say it to her face.

She took another long sip of her vodka, making a face as it burned its way down her throat. There was the sound of a door opening behind Annabeth, but she ignored it, instead choosing to stare out at the setting sun.

“Not gonna do anything stupid, are you?” Piper’s voice drifted over to Annabeth. She didn’t even jump. Of course she’d be the one who’d happen upon her. It was just her luck.

“Go away, McLean,” Annabeth grumbled. “This is my spot.”

Piper snorted. “Um, no, no thanks. It’s my spot on Tuesdays. It’s my thinking spot. So really, you’re the intruder here.” 

“I’m surprised you have one, I didn’t think you thought at all,” Annabeth snapped. Her lips tugged downward into a deep frown. She hadn’t meant to be mean, but she just needed space and having Piper there wasn’t going to give her any. “I just fucking need this right now, okay?”

Piper muttered something under her breath and moved to sit down a fair distance away from her, curling into a ball with her arms wrapped around her legs. It seemed she wasn’t going anywhere, so Annabeth resolved herself to ignore her. She took another swig from her bottle, wrapped her blanket further around her shoulders, and returned to staring off into the sunset. 

God, it just wasn’t fair. She’d worked so fucking  _ hard _ on her last piece, and instead she’d gotten a disappointed glare from the professor and a few snide comments from the drawing majors in her class. Her heart hurt with every remembered word. A tear slid down her cheek that she rushed to wipe away. 

Great, now she was crying. Annabeth hated crying. It was like a sign of weakness.

There was a silent gasp and then Piper moved closer. “Is that vodka?” she asked, a slightly desperate edge to her words. Annabeth glared at her and hugged the bottle closer. “Gimme some, I need a drink.”

Annabeth sighed, reluctantly handing over the bottle. It was still mostly full, only a few swigs taken from it. She wasn’t aiming to get blackout drunk, after all. Just ease the righteous indignation that was sitting just below her chest. As Piper took a long gulp, Annabeth hummed. “Last time you were drunk in my presence, you threw up on me,” she pointed out.

Piper shrugged. “You accosted me when I was clearly out of my mind,” she replied. “Your fault.”

“Those were my favorite shoes,” Annabeth argued. “And I had to shower at Jason’s. He has a shitty hot water heater. I shouldn’t be offering you anything to drink now.”

“Technically, you didn’t offer. I just asked,” Piper said. 

Silence fell between them broken only by one or the other taking another drink from the bottle. Annabeth’s head was ever so slightly fuzzy by now, so she pulled a water bottle out of her bag and started nursing that instead. 

“Why do you hate me so much?” Annabeth asked suddenly, ruining the semi-awkward silence. Her voice was small, quiet, and it matched the uncharacteristic smallness that she was feeling in that moment. “What did I do?”

There was a soft sigh from her right, and Annabeth glanced over to see Piper had curled further into yourself. “I don’t know,” she said, voice equally soft. “There’s just something that… that makes me so… I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Annabeth huffed, hiding her face inside the blanket for a moment as a cold wind swept across the rooftop. Her hair fell in front of her eyes. “Ya know, you’re kinda a hypocrite,” she said. “You act like you’re so much better than me, but then you’re shallow enough to hate me based solely on my major.” In a quieter voice, she adds, “It really hurts, you know?”

She glanced over at Piper, who was studying her hands with her brow furrowed. “Bitch is a horrible word,” she mumbled. “People use it to tear women down, and equate them to animals. I hate it. I… People call my mom and cousin bitches all the time and they act like it doesn’t bother them, but when no one’s around…it’s weird to see someone as strong as they are break.”

Piper looked up at her now, her eyes hard. There’s an anger in them that Annabeth has never seen in her before. “You’re a hypocrite too, you know,” she added. “You called me a bitch for what I do, but you never thought to ask  _ why _ , just judge me for being so fucking ‘shallow.’”

“Piper, I-”

“It’s all you, Annabeth.” She was angry, Annabeth could tell. Her cheeks were red, and her hands were clenched into tight fists in her lap, like she’s just waiting for the perfect target for her desperate fury. There was a pregnant pause before she let out a long breath through her nose; her shoulders relaxed ever-so slightly. Her voice was slightly calmer the next time she opened her mouth. “I do stupid things when I’m drunk. I let my pride get in the way. I let my mouth work faster than my brain and then I just can’t stop myself around you.” She closed her eyes, pulling her legs up to her chest and burying her face into them.

Annabeth nodded, the gears turning in her brain. She tugged on a curl, watching a shiver that wracked through Piper’s body when the wind whips over the roof. Without actually thinking about it, she opened her blanket, wrapping it around Piper’s shoulders and pulling it shut once it’s properly situated. They sat so close she almost couldn’t breathe, touching from shoulder to hip, from thigh to ankle beneath the warm wool. Her hand brushed against Piper’s arm, and Annabeth could almost swear she heard the other girl’s breath catch in her throat.

“You drive me insane,” Annabeth admitted. She was vaguely aware that she was still slightly tipsy, that the words wouldn’t dare come out if she didn’t have a stomach full of water and alcohol and not much else. What was with them and always being drunk around each other, anyway? That couldn’t be healthy.  “With your stupid insults and the stupid feud - which there’s no way you actually care about anyway, because of Leo and I  _ know _ that. It makes me so mad. Why do you do it?”

Piper bit her lip, ducking her head beneath the hem of the blanket for just a few seconds. When she reemerged, she stared out over the now darkened campus and avoided Annabeth’s gray-eyed gaze. “Like I said, I do stupid things when I’m drunk, and I was just. Too proud to back down.” She paused, worrying her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. “And, to be honest, it’s the only way I could think of to get your attention.”

“That’s so  _ stupid _ , Piper,” Annabeth snapped before she could even think about it. She felt the girl flinch away at her tone and hurried to explain herself. Her voice softened, and she placed a gentle hand on top of one of Piper’s knees. “You really think that you have to make me angry to notice you, like some stupid boy pulling on a girl’s pigtails in the schoolyard because society teaches us that’s how you show you like someone? There’s so many other things I could notice about you instead, if we weren’t snapping at each other all the time.” 

Piper looked up at her then, her eyes locking on hers. (And what color were her eyes, even? Annabeth couldn’t tell, just could see that they were distractingly gorgeous.) A small smirk graced her lips and it made Annabeth’s stomach flip inside of her. “Oh yeah? Like what?” Piper asked, and there was an edge of challenge in her tone. 

And, well, Annabeth never backed down from a challenge.

She shifted herself, cracking her neck the way she always did when she meant business. A smirk to match Piper’s worked its way onto her face, which, she noticed, made Piper’s cheeks flush red in the dim light that they had left. 

“Well, let’s see,” she started, drawing out her words to raise the anticipation. “Your laugh is annoyingly adorable. You’re wittier than most of the people I’ve talked to, and I talk to a lot of witty people. You care so much about your mom and your cousins. You’re a damn good artist - I’ve seen the stuff Leo has, you know. And good God, your eyes could murder me.”

She slapped a hand over her mouth at the last sentence, feeling the heat rushing to her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to say that. Piper was going to think she was such a creep. Damn it.

Piper’s nose wrinkled in a way that was disgustingly adorable, and her lips crept up into a mischievous smile that Annabeth frankly wanted to kiss off her face. “Why, Annabeth Chase, do you have a crush on me?” 

Annabeth didn’t even have it in her to wonder how Piper had learned her last name. Jason had probably told her, or at least that’s what she assumed. She was too busy stuttering, stumbling over her words in the way that she normally never did. Finally, her words came back to her. Unfortunately, they weren’t the ones she anticipated, and they tumbled out of her mouth like the word vomit that Jason was always spewing when he was nervous. Never had she thought she’d understand what it felt like to be Jason Grace.

“That’s the problem!” she exclaimed, curling away from Piper and into herself. “I don’t do emotions, they don’t make sense, they’re not helpful or logical. But you make me feel everything, all at once, and I don’t know how to  _ deal _ with it. You piss me off because you make me turn into a disaster and I’m not a fucking disaster. I’m a lot of things, but not that. Jesus Christ, can I stop talking now?”

The other girl stared at her for a long moment, before she started giggling. She was suddenly much, much closer to Annabeth, her face stuck right up close to Annabeth’s. Her nose was so close that she could just barely make out freckles that weren’t noticeable from afar. Just a little closer and their lips would be touching. 

“You’re stupidly pretty,” Piper said. “You’re smart. You rebutt every single one of my horrible comments. You stand up for yourself and everyone else. You come up to  _ my spot _ to think. You’re an amazing architect, top of your class according to Jason. You’re hair looks like a princess’ and I could literally die in the storm in your eyes.” 

“Wh-What are you doing?” Annabeth’s heart was pounding in her chest. It felt like it would be more at home in her brothers’ rabbit’s chest than in hers. She could swear Piper had gotten even closer.

“You told me all the things you’d notice about me,” she explained. Annabeth could feel her breath on her lips. A shiver ran up her spine that made Piper pull the blanket around them even tighter. She couldn’t make herself explain that it wasn’t from the cold. “I’m telling you all the things I see in you before disaster.”

It took a moment for Annabeth to formulate a response. “You-You hate me,” she said. “I called you a bitch.”

“I don’t hate you,” Piper said. “I’m horrible and petty and mean, and I don’t hate you. Quite the opposite actually. I guess you could say I’m bad with emotions too.” Her eyes darted to Annabeth’s lips, and it took everything to not surge forward and kiss her. 

This had not been what Annabeth had expected when she’d climbed up on the roof earlier. That didn’t even feel like it was the same day.

“Piper,” Annabeth started, but her voice cracked. She cleared her throat, tried again. “Piper, can I kiss you?”

A smile flashed across Piper’s face, a giggle clung to her voice. “I thought you’d never ask,” she replied. 

As cheesy as it was, kissing Piper felt like fireworks.


End file.
